Universities to charge maximum fees

UNIVERSITIES across England are set to charge students the maximum £3,000 a year in tuition fees. Details will be announced next week of the first wave of charges under the controversial new system which comes into force for the first time in autumn 2006, the London Evening Standard has learned.

And our research reveals that universities including Oxford and Bristol have gained permission from education watchdog the Office for Fair Access (Offa) to raise their fees to the maximum amount.

This means that universities will charge £3,000 a year - 9,000 for a three-year course - for popular degree courses such as English, medicine, law, maths and economics.

It also means that those starting next year can expect to graduate owing more than £20,000 when student loans are added on. At present, students typically finish their degrees with debts of around £12,000.

None of the 15 universities that responded to our survey said Offa had vetoed their plans. They said they would charge £3,000 for a degree course, except for Thames Valley University, which will charge £2,700.

The changes are part of the Government's controversial new approach to university funding, which sparked huge political battles over the contributions expected from students and their families.

The Government hopes that lifting the cap on fees from £1,150 to £3,000 will raise around £2bn, on top of the £10bn universities will get from the taxpayer in 2005-2006.

But universities say fees need to rise even higher to plug a £10bn hole in their finances and are lobbying hard to have the £3,000 limit scrapped. An Oxford spokeswoman said: 'It does not cover our deficit on teaching, but we are conscious of the need to attract the best students.'

Universities have convinced Offa that they will balance higher fees with efforts to attract more State school and working class students. They have also promised in the 'access agreements' they have struck with Offa to put between 20% and 40% of their income from fees towards bursaries and hardship grants for the poorest undergraduates.

Education Secretary Ruth Kelly has called on elite universities to use much of the extra funds to support cash-strapped undergraduates. She said: 'There has never been a better time to be a poor, bright student in this country.'

Oxford will offer bursaries worth £10,000 over three years to students whose families earn less than £16,000 a year. Cambridge has promised bursaries worth up to £4,000.

Top-up fees have proved extremely unpopular with the National Union of Students (NUS). NUS vice president education Hannah Essex said: 'Without sufficient investment, institutions can only see the income coming from students.'

Labour promised in its 2001 manifesto not to allow universities to charge top-up fees - and broke that promise two and a half years later. As a result, Tony Blair won the crucial Commons vote on fees in January 2004 with a majority of just five, his smallest winning margin since coming to power in 1997.

Students whose families earn less than £15,000 a year will not have to pay fees. And people who are eligible to pay will not have to find the money until after they have left university and are earning more than £15,000 a year. But the children of many middle-income families will be hit for the full amount. Students with family incomes of more than £33,000 a year will have to pay the full fee.

View from the provost

MALCOLM GRANT, the provost of University College London, runs one of the UK's top universities, with an income of nearly £520m. There are almost 12,000 undergraduates at UCL - which won £160m in research grants last year, yet still has a loss of £7.5m a year on teaching.

Top-up fees of £3,000 a year will make 'remarkably little difference', adding only 2% to income. Under the new regime £17m will be generated, about a third of which will fund bursaries.

Professor Grant said: 'The Government is trying to do too much with too little money - it is trying to increase the rate of school leavers going to university [but] it's no longer willing to fund the teaching at university.'

It costs UCL £10,000 per student to teach arts degrees, £15,000 for science subjects and more than £20,000 for clinical medicine courses. Government support is around £12,000. Top-up fees would have to rise to £8,000 or £9,000 for UCL to break even.

Professor Grant admitted that would be politically very difficult, adding that it will take 20 years for society to get used to paying for university.